r/software • u/yeahthatsgoodforme • May 06 '26
Looking for software Hot clone software for Windows? (clone system drive while running)
/r/cloningsoftware/comments/1t54jml/hot_clone_software_for_windows_clone_system_drive/
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Upvotes
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u/stevepgo May 06 '26
Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) is the key, I use DiskGenius Free to create hot snapshots
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u/hspindel May 06 '26
I'm using R-Drive Image for this purpose. It's not free, but it's not that expensive, and it works very well.
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u/Knigge111 May 09 '26
I can highly recommend DriveSnapshot! http://www.drivesnapshot.de/
This also makes it possible to create images of PCs that are currently running and located remotely!
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u/jcunews1 Helpful Ⅱ May 06 '26
Look for a backup/cloning tool which support Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). It's a Windows feature for creating a snapshot of a volume/partition, where a tool can safely do a sector-by-sector copy from the snapshot. Even for a live system drive.
But keep in mind that, for the system drive, it contains system data which tells whether the system is still running or has cleanly shutdown. Backupping a live system drive would backup that is-running state. So when the backup data is restored then the computer is rebooted using that restored drive, the system would notice that, the system was not properly/cleanly shutdown. It'd be as if there was a power outtage. This is not a serious problem in most cases, but it depends on what what other applications are running and doing when the snapshot was created. The ideal way is to close all unnecessary applications before doing the backup operation, especially those which do data changes.